"Fire is motion / Work is repetition / This is my document / We are all all we've done / We are all all we've done / We are all all we've done / We are all all defenses."
so many nights spent listening to The National, they've become an outside comfort. they always seemed to know the state of our relationship, both good and bad. but i guess that's every band, isn't it? so much written about love, loss and pain.
in the early evenings in Los Angeles, cooking dinner in our loft apartment, bright kitchen lights softly illuminating the bedroom office, we lived in one large room with many corners connected by a staircase. back then, the lyrics that spoke to our situation were:
Stay out super late tonight
Picking apples, making pies
Put a little something in our lemonade
And take it with us
Tiptoe through our shiny city
With our diamond slippers on
Do our gay ballet on ice
Bluebirds on our shoulders
Turn the light out, say goodnight
No thinking for a little while
Let's not try to figure out everything at once
It's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
We're half awake in a fake empire
and now? i can't stop listening to this song. it's a chorus to the waves of pain and regret i feel throughout the day. it gives shape to the voids and emptiness and soft-voiced anger i have felt since this started sinking in. it's a reminder that things will be different and i'll never get certain things back, even songs are changed.
Don't make me read your mind
It takes me too much time
You're not that much like me
We have different enemies
You should know me better than that
I should leave it alone but you're not right
I should leave it alone but you're not right
Can't you write it on the wall?
There's no room to write it all
Can you turn the TV down?
There's too much crying in the sound
I should know you better than that
I should leave it alone but you're not right
I should live in salt for leaving you behind
Behind
Think about something so much
Start to slide out of touch
Tell yourself it's all you know
Learn to appreciate the void
You should know me better than that
I should live in salt for leaving you behind
Behind
I should live in salt for leaving you behind
Behind
I should live in salt for leaving you behind
Behind
things have been so shitty lately. if i can live through this i can live through anything.
i can literally feel my heart break into irreparable pieces every day. i think if i ever manage to put the pieces back together, it will be less capacious than before. sometimes i feel i may never find a way out of this sadness.
my survival tactic is to space out distractions for myself... yoga this day, dancing the next, dinner with friends the day after that, a phone call with a west coast friend after that... and in those gaps, i learn songs on the guitar and ukulele, like applying mortar to the gaps between bricks... hoping i can build up defenses around me.
i'm not a super singer. i do ok with strumming things but i'm no rock star. i'm just trying to cobble together an arsenal of kick ass break-up songs to sing when i feel my resolve disappearing.
Intro - GADGGA
You were in my dream last night
DG
Like every night since two years ago
GA
I think my dream is trying to tell my something
DG
And I say “tell me something I don't already know”
G G/B Em A DJust buy me a drink, so I can refuseG G A DTo raise my glass to these sad and worn out midnight shoes G A DIn my next dream I want a pair of cowboy boots G A DThe kind that walks the straightest and most narrow routeG/BAnywhere but back to you
G A
Here we are down the same old street
D G
Here we are with nothing to say
G A
My little hand trying to make it into yours
D G
But you put it in your pocket and look away
G A
I keep my eyes on the sidewalk
D G
For something flippable like a dime
G A
I wanna know how you forgive someone
D G
Someone you've forgiven so many times
G G/B Em A DJust buy me a drink, so I can refuseG G A DTo raise my glass to these sad and worn out midnight shoes G A DIn my next dream I want a pair of cowboy boots G A DThe kind that walks the straightest and most narrow routeG/BAnywhere but back to you
Sharon Van Etten is having her moment, and good for her. i was driving around Syracuse this morning, feeling so sad and lost, and then this song emerged from a long playlist i made in college.
it was like being thrown a parachute. i felt lifted above the gravity of my sadness for a moment.
i wanted to keep singing it and singing it and thus soothe all these heart wounds. apply it generously like a salve.
you can see i'm breaking up a bit over here. there are some words that are harder to say and swallow than others.
Post traumatic stress: not just for war, she thought. She felt silly and dramatic for thinking that. But what else to call this incessant feeling? The ceased existence of what was once vibrant; the vivid aching realness of something disappeared. The feeling of emptiness- how did all those moments fill such a space in the heart and then just suddenly disappear?- and the fear it will never be filled again, a saggy receptacle stretched larger still with the weight of this sadness. The splintering of happiness into a million, haunting, ever-present but gone moments. The way a lyric in a song could cause her to recall an unwelcome feeling and send her reeling into a fit of despair in the middle of driving to buy groceries. Standing in her kitchen washing dishes, a phantom sensation of a caress on the shoulder would cause her to break and slump into herself, sobbing. Scraps of paper with hand scribbled notes, casually tacked to the wall now were precious artifacts of a bygone time, and would cause her to clutch herself for fear of fading away, crying on the couch until day receded into night, and she was still alone. Little ghosts scattered everywhere, peppered throughout the day. Every moment riddled with landmines.
Being among people had become an alien experience. She thought surrounding herself would offer a much needed distraction, a way to escape from the weight of her thoughts. But she felt the nagging tug of that darkness even more in the presence of others. The language of happiness, of excitement, made her feel foreign, lonelier than ever. Misery had become her skin, her parasite, the tug and comfort of a strait jacket.
she opened her eyes. 7:23 am. the sun was already beaming onto her face from the window across the bed from her, shining hot and bright from off the roof of the house across the driveway. the birds were perched as they were every morning for the last 47 days, heads cocked cheerily to the side, screaming their tiny lungs into the summer air. at least they were happy it was summer. at least there was constancy there. so much life and cheer in small animals, she thought. she imagined the thoughts of a little bird brain, wished for the daily happiness that caused small birds to sing.
her face was heavy and puffy, her eyes refusing to open despite feeling wide awake. perhaps it was her allergies, the endless crying that caused her face to swell like it needed an epi pen, or the incurable wakefulness. it had been 57 days since she had slept a full night. she'd toss and turn in bed, drifting between bouts of fitful sobbing and panicky night sweats. the crying helped to exhaust her enough to drift into a pretend slumber before the panic of her reality set in again and the muscles in her face, her jaw, her hands, her forehead would tense, she'd feel the weight of her existence crushing down on her like a steel clamp, and she'd be eyes open again, staring into the darkness of the night, thinking about a life spent like this and feeling afraid that she'd never enjoy a moment of calm and not-fear again. it felt like a life sentence, trapped in the cell of her body, a vessel for a punishment meted out for a crime she didn't realize she'd committed.
she would lay there in bed picking through the details of her life, hopelessly trying to find the reasons she deserved to be this unhappy. a Sysiphean task, she feared she'd find herself rolling that crushing weight around in her mind every moment for the rest of her life.
things i never, ever, never ever EVER wanted to be doing with my life:
#1 - join an online dating site.
at first i did it for "research" purposes after hearing this Freakonomics podcast, and then out of curiosity after reading this article. i figured if it's good enough for PJ Vogt, surely it could be good enough for me? (and in all honesty, i thought, if guys like PJ Vogt are using OKCupid, maybe that's where i need to be meeting more eligible, PJ Vogt-like men!) honestly though, i'd never even heard of OKCupid until this podcast, and didn't think people were actually using sites like these to, you know, really date. as soon as i created my profile i felt like i had just set myself up to be trolled.
i figure the internet already brings out the worst in people by granting a veil of anonymity and a low-risk of getting caught for shitty actions and a low accountability to "real" people. but then when you add in the potential for "hook-ups," hundreds of thousands of objectifying men, personal questions about sex, relationships, etc. AND a chat/messaging function? you've pretty much designed THE WORST way i can possibly imagine to meet people. for me at the moment, it still remains a social experiment -- how many guys are interested in me because of the pictures i posted and how many are actually impressed by my work experiences, my interests and my hobbies? i've also been interested to see how race factors into my popularity on OKCupid. so far, i'm surprised that it's been far fewer Asian men and many, many African-American men. like, twice the amount from any other race. lots of young'uns too. and then there was this guy:
what am i, or anyone, supposed to do with that??
i also had a guy try to chat me up and get me to hook up with him and when i said i wouldn't, he proceeded to lecture me about moralizing and basically called me a "stuck up b****." the best part was, about a month later, he tried chatting with me again under a different username (but same picture), and when i ignored him he tried again the next week ("third time's the charm?") i guess even in the digital world of human interaction, a lady just can't get a break from the douchey entitled bros.
all of this to say: i'm angry that this is what's happening. i poured my heart into the last seven years and worked so hard to make another person happy because i thought it's what i wanted and because i thought i couldn't imagine living without this other person. it made me happy to give so much of myself to make someone else happy. then i wake up one day and it's like a switch was turned off, and he became a different person. unable to feel anything, unable to understand what he'd meant to me the last seven years, unable to even look me in the eyes and tell me how his heart has changed, explain what has happened. i look at him now and i feel so distraught and angry, at him for changing into this totally different person who can treat me like such shit, and at myself for letting this happen, for making myself vulnerable and not expecting this could happen one day. every day i wake up and grieve for the person i loved who i feel is now lost to time forever. wherever that person went, i will never see him again, and looking at pictures from the past is such a deep wound in my heart ripped open all over again because i don't understand where that person has gone and know that they've also taken that version of myself with them. i will never be the happy smiling woman in those pictures again either. we're both lost, we've destroyed each other. i used to be excited about the rest of my life with another person, and now i dread the rest of my life spent agonizing forever the doomed happiness of the last seven years.
i don't typically watch the Mindy Project, but found myself alone on Friday night after a long week of emotional intelligence/conflict-management classes and needed to be understood. somehow, strangely, this episode did the trick.
having never watched the show, i didn't know any of the back story for the two characters Danny and Mindy, didn't know how they started dating and ended up breaking up, but it didn't matter. when Danny starts running through NYC towards the Empire State Building to meet Mindy to the tune of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" i literally gasped and put my hands to my face... this was romance and it was making me happy.
maybe i'm being ridiculous. i can hear my girlfriends and the college version of myself mocking me right now... these are the ideas the movies and pop culture poison our brains with, you are above this romantic mumbo jumbo. you don't need men running up buildings to declare their love for you, you are full of self-love and you don't need them!
true.
but.
after weeks of feeling not only unloved and under-appreciated by someone i once imagined spending the rest of my life with, i not only feel a general disillusionment and doubt about my ability to love and be loved (plus, a resulting lack of self-love), i feel an increasing suspicion i've tried to suppress my need for romantic love in order to convince myself i could be happy with what i had. those grand gestures, like developing an elaborate scheme to tell someone you love them, though saccharine and cinematic, are the kinds of things i wish people would do for me in real life. do those people exist? are there still people who go out of their way to express their love for someone? i haven't been with anyone who ever did that for me, but i ache for it.
growing up i thought love was weakness, romance was cliche and women who bought into this myth were submissive, and i never wanted to be one of them. i laughed at the women who went to college for their MRS degree (btw, barf, i hate that phrase). but maybe it's age or me gradually learning to think for myself, but there are multiple ways to be a fully realized, independent person. and i'm not ashamed to admit that if someone ran up a tall building to Springsteen to woo me it would make me supremely happy.
*title of this post is a reference to the When Harry Met Sally scene, referenced in an earlier part of this episode. so many rom-com tropes activating!
hello!
recently i've had quite a few friends tell me they've struggled with developing a home practice, and a few have even asked me to share my approach to developing my own practice. my friend Andrea recently sent me the following email:
Hi Stephanie!
I'm writing because I know you're a seasoned yogi, and I am looking to get into home-practice. Do you have any tips for home practice or yoga sequences that I can do on my own at home? Yoga in the city is so expensive and unfortunately, I cant really fit it into my funemployed budget right now :]
I hope all is well!
Andrea
i was delighted to have the opportunity to share my thoughts with her. developing a strong home yoga practice is, in my humble opinion, like learning to change your own bike tire and cutting your own bangs -- daunting and scary at first, but super empowering; every independent woman should know how to do it!
As for home yoga practice, I'm happy to offer some of my own thoughts based on what's worked for me. What I've done is tried to replicate favorite routines my old yoga instructor in CA would do. Or try to string together poses that go well together (ex: flowing from warrior II to half moon, or warrior I to dancer's pose). I make a playlist that I can really groove to and try to focus on the music and let that "move" me in my yoga practice. For me, yoga is a compromise for my six-year-old self who always wanted to be a dancer but never got to be on stage -- I absolutely cherish it as a time to listen to music and allow my body to respond in the most graceful ways I can manage to transform it. I know that's probably not very helpful, but those are the things that have helped me in my own home practice.
this pose sums it up: Camatkarasana, "the ecstatic unfolding of the enraptured heart"
More practically speaking, I think easing yourself into it is the best way to go. Maybe find 2 classes a week that really excite you, with teachers whose energy you really dig and whose practice mirrors your own. Use their group classes as a guide and a reference for thinking about developing your own home practice, and try to build your practice slowly, say once a week finding an hour on the mat to work on a series you want to master (hip openers, side stretches, twists and rotations, balance poses, etc.) And the sun salutation is a good building block that you already know really well -- see if you can add poses onto the ends of each sun salutation each time and expand from there. For example, I start out my practice with very basic sun salutations (standing mountain, swan dive, forward fold, monkey, chaturanga, up dog, down dog, repeat) then add on when I feel warmed up (three legged dogs on each side, warrior series, then repeat with rotations, try a dolphin instead of a down dog, transition into arm balances). I think the hardest part of a home practice is really challenging yourself to hold the poses, think about your breath, and think about your body -- usually that stuff is all taken care of by an instructor, but when you go it alone you have to internalize all of it. That's why a strong playlist really helped me at first, not only so I could have something to distract me when I wanted to quit or relax out of a pose, but also because it helped me figure out timing. Once you get used to practicing on your own you get better at knowing the poses you want to work on, integrating breath and movement, and you'll develop a routine or framework that you can return to each time you practice on your own. And the best part: once you fully develop your home practice, you're not confined to an hour in a studio space... you can be at home, or go outside, and hold those poses for as long as you please.
Does this help at all? Sorry if all you really wanted was a link to a site or something... I know a few of my friends have used podcasts on iTunes to help with their home practice... you could try that too if you wanted something more concrete.
(Nothing sums up the joy of a self-directed practice better than spending nearly two hours blissed out in a park enjoying your poses with the sun shining on you and birds singing all around.)
For those who are interested, here are two playlists I regularly listen to when doing yoga:
never have i ever wished harder for a time machine than the last few days.
technological advancement has enabled time preservation of the cruelest kind... i can pull up emails from a few months ago, years ago, and read them and transport myself back to a time that was so happy and filled with promise and yet so achingly out of reach. so real and in my grasp, summoned from memory as if it were yesterday, but still rigidly in the past. i can remember, but never resurrect.
how much i wish for second chances. if only those sweet words that used to be heartfelt could be re-learned and practiced. like sitting back down at the piano and playing that favorite song. climbing back on a bike after falling off and riding it over hills to the next town over, leaving this dreary place behind.
all my deepest desires to still time, to go backwards, to wallow in nostalgic longing, can be traced back to a painful understanding that nothing lasts, and somethings you can never get back, no matter how much you try to recreate and/or preserve them. we are all victims to time.
this article about the Indiana Pacers' mind-boggling playoffs performance is pretty much THE BEST SPORTS ANALOGY EVER for my love life. if ever a guy had difficulty understanding the way love works (ALL THE FRIGGIN TIME, amirite?) just give him this article and hope he's able to stretch himself mentally/emotionally to identify with Pacers fans.
"Rooting for a team like the Pacers is a special exercise in having your brain broken by loyalty. Root for a bad team long enough and you just get inured to it, but a disappointing team? A team that has talent, gets your hopes up, flirts with success, and then, due to some mystifying inner lack, self-dismantles just when it really matters? That’s a torch song. They’re too good for you to switch your feelings off, too unpredictable for you to ever feel safe, too successful for you to hide behind cynicism, too bent on failure for you not to know that your hope is a missile pointed at the moon."
guh. this is the Modern Love column i've been wanting to write.
i saw Neko Case perform at the Egg in Albany with some good friends last night: a college friend, a friend from my recent graduate program, and one of my best friends, my partner of 7 years (he turned 30 yesterday).
Neko came out to perform this song for her encore. just her and a guitarist. i was in tears by the end of it. something about sitting with all these people who i loved so much, people i've needed in different ways at different stages of my life, some who i've gotten much closer to over the years and others who i know time and distance will eventually pull us apart, not knowing the future of things, not understanding the past, and wanting so much to pull it all in tight and protect it from the erosion of time ever-marching onward. i've never been so afraid for a moment to end.
so i'm just gonna put this video here, and some lyrics that particularly spoke to me, like a little fragile time capsule for me to come back to another day and remember how i felt in this particular moment, tears streaming down my face in a dark spaceship-like concert venue, afraid for the lights to turn back on again.
"I would change for you but, babe, that doesn't mean I'm gonna be a better man Give the ocean what I took from you so one day you could find it in the sand And hold it in your hands again Cold ways kill cool lovers Strange ways we used each other Why won't you fall back in love with me?"
when i was home a few days ago i started reading Copenhagen.
for some reason, it was just calling to me. i've had it on the shelf for years, one of the select books from college i kept around in arm's reach. i remember being assigned it as reading in one of my core classes (Natural Systems), but never read far before i abandoned it for something else (the only notes i made in the margin ended on page 5, with a blue box around the words "Uncertainty Principle" and "complementarity.")
well, i'd pretty much forgotten anything and everything about the play until i picked it up and started reading it, and, perhaps due to my brimming obsession with Breaking Bad, have found it more interesting and relevant than before. reading it has made me wonder if perhaps Vince Gilligan was inspired, to some extent, by the work of Michael Frayn and the history of nuclear physics.
the play is nothing but an ongoing theoretical conversation between mentor Niels Bohr, his former student (and now rival physicist) Werner Heisenberg, and Bohr's wife cum secretary Margrethe. it takes place in some future time after all three have passed into the next life and involves a discussion of Heisenberg's (in)famous visit to Copenhagen, the true motives and results of which are unclear to historians and the scientific community. the three actors circle each other throughout the piece (as can be seen in the photo off the cover), as electrons inside an atom, mirroring the atomic physics at the center of their discussion, but also drawing attention to the relationships of individuals/elements to one another.
for people who watch Breaking Bad, this is what comes to mind when we hear "Heisenberg":
volatile, explosive, unpredictable. dangerous. seems to me that Vince Gilligan is very careful and methodical with how he created the world of Walt and Breaking Bad, and it seems unlikely that Walt choosing Heisenberg as his nom de guerre is not mere coincidence but part of Gilligan's elaborate plan.
some interesting overlaps and parallels:
1. Heisenberg the physicist was recruited by Germany, becoming the youngest professor to work on quantum physics at the university where he began his career, later developing and contributing research to the Nazi regime's atomic bomb program (does this explain the Nazis in Breaking Bad? always thought they were an unexpected curveball at the end of the series)
2. his mentor, Niels Bohr, was himself a prominent physicist and renowned for his work in nuclear physics, but due to German occupation in his home country of Denmark, was forced to escape extermination
3. from Copenhagen, page 24:
Bohr talks about Heisenberg's recklessness (while skiing, but also how it reflects his approach to his scientific work): "At the speed you were going you were up against the uncertainty relationship... You never cared what got destroyed on the way, as long as the mathematics worked out you were satisfied."
H: "If something works it works."
4. page 51, (talking about the arrival of the Allies and the end of the war) Heisenberg: "Under my control -- yes! That's the point! Under my control!"
Bohr: "Nothing was under anyone's control by that time!"
5. page 74, H: "However we got there, by whatever combination of high principles and low calculation, of most painfully hard thought and most painfully childish tears, it works. It goes on working."
6. page 75, Margrethe: "Your talent is for skiing too fast for anyone to see where you are. For always being in more than one position at a time, like one of your particles."
7. page 94, Heisenberg: "Our children and our children's children. Preserved, just possibly, by that one short moment... By some event that will never quite be located or defined. By that final core of uncertainty at the heart of things."
----
and finally, these chilling words, written by Frayn, said by Heisenberg, shared by me with you on the eve of the series finale of Breaking Bad:
"I'm your enemy; I'm also your friend. I'm a danger to mankind; I'm also your guest. I'm a particle; I'm also a wave. We have one set of obligations to the world in general, and we have other sets, never to be reconciled, to our fellow-countrymen, to our neighbors, to our friends, to our family, to our children... All we can do is to look afterwards, and see what happened."
-Heisenberg (page 77-78)
----
happy Breaking Bad finale day, folks! i don't know if it's because it's the last day one of the best things to ever happen to television will be on the air, or the quickly disappearing summer and impending winter, or that it's the last day of my unemployment, but i am filled with a lingering sadness. i am going to miss this Sunday feeling so much.
so many thoughts on last night's mind-blowing, stomach-churning, fever-inducing episode of Breaking Bad. [WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!]
1. the first is that BB is unarguably THE best show i have ever seen, or will possibly ever see. it has ruined TV for me. last week's episode began tickling at this suggestion; this week's episode firmly confirms it. all bow down to the crew of directors and writers and actors involved in making this masterpiece.
2. how great was that opening shot? a close up on boiling water in a coffee pot -- that volatile state when water (calm, still, untainted and soothing) rapidly transforms, spurting, jumping, wailing, able to burn, sting, and scar -- and a key part to "cooking." we realize in that visual the ways in which the process of cooking is a greater and more appropriate metaphor than we had ever realized, illustrating the changes that have taken place in Walt, and foreshadowing the sudden reaction point the show's narrative will reach by the end of the episode ("Boiling is the rapid vaporization of a liquid, which occurs when a liquid is heated to its boiling point, the temperature at which the vapor pressure of the liquid is equal to the pressure exerted on the liquid by the surrounding environmental pressure." -Wikipedia)
the image also made me recall Walt's clever use of a coffee maker to escape earlier in the series, a devasatating juxtaposition with what transpires in the next few minutes (no clean escapes here; Walt is stuck, once again in handcuffs, and forced to see the damage of his decisions, unable even to bargain for Hank's life -- the first time he is rendered utterly powerless in the show's history)... BB is great at developing the significance of recurring images... as in later in the episode when Walt's pants are rediscovered in the desert -- hilarious and brilliant, and a bit of a wink to fans of the show.
3. Hank's last words to Walt are brief, typically Agent Schrader, and one of the few moments of courage we see in this episode (the others being Walt Jr.'s defense of his mom -- see below -- and later, Walt's phone call to Skyler -- theories on that in another post...): "You're one of the smartest people I've ever met. But you're too stupid to see he made up his mind 10 minutes ago." Hank leaves us with the overarching moral of the story: Walt is someone who foolishly overestimates his own control over things, unable to see the inevitability of his destructive decisions. finally someone is able to point out the stupidity underlying Walt's illusions of glory and triumph.
4. the flashback to Walt and Jesse's first cook is a good one, but not in the most obvious way. true, we witness Walt's "first lie to Skyler," and this is an innocent, more naive time, when Walt merely wanted to protect his family, soothe things over, mollify his pregnant wife with dreams of pizza.
but this is also an origin story for Heisenberg, whose noble intent was always the protection of his family, whose guiding mission and motivation was to provide for them -- from pizza, to Empire.
the image we see at the beginning of this episode of Walt is a vision from a happier time, which hurts all the more when later in the episode, Walt's one moral code -- don't hurt family -- is violently, perversely violated with the loss of Hank. and then later, when even Walt Jr. (whimpering as he defends Walt's reputation against his mom and his aunt) physically stands up to Walt in order to protect Skyler. this was a huge moment -- Walt standing back while his family cowers in fear of him, sobbing to himself, "But we're a family!"
does this look like a family to you?
the evolution of Walt has come full-circle, and the cruel contrast between the first and final seasons (or the terrifying notion that these two personas are, have always been, the same man) feels like a knife twisting in our stomachs, the two scenes acting as frames of reference for each other -- placating with pizza to a living room knife fight. look how far we've come.
this whole episode is a searing look into what Walt's passions and plans have wrought. even with his strategic care, his meticulousness, his ferocity (or perhaps because of them), he has managed to become, in the end, what he least wanted -- a disease on his family, their greatest fear, the source of the deepest, darkest pain and suffering of all.
and yet, what hurts the most for Walt is perhaps the realization that he is suddenly alone -- no, that he has always been alone. his family never wanted this -- pizza was once enough of a happy thought to unite the family -- but Walt set his sights on Empire, on greed ("what's with all the greed? it's unattractive" -Uncle Jack), and on his real priority: #1, his ego (or his id?), Heisenberg.
it's painfully clear, to Walt and to the audience, that he was always alone, that the thing he wanted the most was something he destroyed piece by piece with his own hands. the presumed marital bliss, the ease of a harmonious family life, the comfort of having a loved one on the phone -- these are things that will never be recovered. Walt is left with nothing, realizing he is unfit to take care of Holly, the only family member left who could maybe survive all of this without judgment of him, but who incessantly cries out for Skyler.
again, another recurring image: Holly being abducted by someone in the family. contrast Walt's taking of Holly to Marie's attempted kidnapping (and Hank's talking her down), and Skyler's despair in reacting to both.
so the episode ends, with Walt being driven away, nothing left for him in the ABQ.
it was an episode befitting of its namesake, "Ozymandias," a poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and which managed to bring the show full-circle. for those who missed it, one of the promos for Breaking Bad released over the summer showcased Bryan Cranston reading the poem in Heisenberg's snarling voice, while images of Albuquerque flash before the screen, ending with a shot of the infamous hat alone in a desert of swirling sand.
watching it will give you full-body chills as you realize just how perfect Breaking Bad is, right down to the shortest promo.
the greatest triumph of Breaking Bad is its inevitable tragedy.
despite the foreshadowing and the inescapable justice that awaits Walt (and possibly some other characters) at the end of this, the audience is spell-bound watching it unfold.
consider this: "To'hajiilee" is the first episode in possibly the entire series where the final 30 minutes were totally predictable, and yet, they were the most intense, excruciating minutes i've ever seen (in television and film). that was a ground-breaking moment in television -- when total expectation of what came next was still met with complete and utter stunned surprise. bravissimo!
----- a few more thoughts: a friend of mine theorized about the significance of Walt's name and his allegiance with the white supremacists (White = right/might). i don't really think there's much symbolic significance to that connection (too literal, in my opinion), but i've
often wondered about the significance of the names -- White, Pinkman, and the non-color-related Goodman (a little literary irony, yes) -- and the use of color in the show.
did you notice how Lydia wore such a vibrant, almost strident shade of
blue in the scene with Todd at the lab? and then Walt wore a drabby cerulean to the desert? even Skyler had a royal blue
edging on her sweater in the car wash. and then Jesse frequently wears
red, as i believe he was in last night's episode. oh god, and then there's Marie with her obsessive, childish purples! (though recently evolved to dark purple, bordering on black, as if in mourning / edging towards sophistication and adulthood as she becomes privy to the wickedness in the world immediately around her).
i read once that Vince
Gilligan made Bryan Cranston try on, like, 50 shirts before he found
the right shade of green for the scene they were shooting. so much
attention to detail and careful execution!
for more on the color theory behind Breaking Bad, see this infographic from a graphic designer who worked on the show: "Colorizing Walter White's Decay" (via Buzzfeed)
-- also: that
scene with Hank on the phone -- one of the few times where Hank seems
to express genuine affection for Marie, also the first time you feel he
is finally actualized in his career; and then the drama that ensues from
the juxtaposition of that with what you know is coming next. brilliant.
--
an interesting thing happened last night, where the audience knew Jesse was leading Walt into a trap in order to trace the phone call to the location of the money. i
initially thought this was a flaw in the writing, that there would be
no way the Walt/Heisenberg we know would be so easily duped. Walt would typically see this move coming and be able to counter it, but he was so overcome with greed/rage/love for Jesse that the thought that Jesse would betray him and trick him never entered his mind until it was already too late. it's also possible that Walt's ego got in the way and he never expected Jesse and Hank to join up to outsmart him at his game.
sidenote:
isn't he incredibly handsome? i am completely astounded by the
physicality of Cranston's acting -- this can't possibly be the same man
behind Heisenberg! if you look at pictures from the first season of
Breaking Bad and compare them to recent pictures, it's as if Cranston
grew a whole knew jawline over the course of the filming. amazing!
----
a logical flaw found in the writing!!
it is hard to believe that Walt, so meticulous and forward thinking, would return the van to Huell and Kubie with desert dust all over it. i mean, doesn't he own a car wash?? specifically a car wash his wife and co-conspirator used to launder his money? also, why would Huell wash a rental before returning it? as Skyler said herself earlier this season, "who washes a rental?!" only suspicious characters, that's who!
since this is the one clue that leads to Walt being caught, it seems pretty far-fetched. also, Walt seems too smart to not check out a rental place and make sure he is untraceable (especially since earlier this season, he even thought to check his car for a GPS tracking device).
another thing that struck me as really odd was that Walt goes through a lot of effort to memorize the GPS coordinates, yet he immediately drives right up to the spot, the spot that also happens to be the same spot where he and Jesse made their first cook? i dunno...
one of the things i'm most grateful for, and will cherish the rest of my life, is the last year - and how, for the first time in my life, i lived only an hour away from my Grandma and not a whole country apart. i went to visit her every weekend, and was always greeted with a big smile and a big hug and lots of food (always so much food!). i practiced my Chinese and was able, for the first time in
my life, to have a real conversation with my Grandma, to understand stories she would tell me about my dad and my uncles when they were growing up, to hear her talk about the time they moved to SF together, to hear her talk about my Grandpa, to hear her talk about poetry and history and how she used to do Tai Chi in the park. to be able to tell her in my limited Mandarin that i love her, and that i think about her every day. and when it came time for me to move away, to tell her that i would miss her, but that i would call her when i got to Syracuse. and when i got to Syracuse, to call her on the phone every week and tell her i missed her and was looking forward to seeing her again soon. i still feel my Mandarin was never quite advanced enough to tell her how much i love her, or to understand all the wisdom she imparted to me. and one year will never be enough, but i'm so glad i had that time and spent it getting to know her. æˆ‘æ„›ä½ å¥¶å¥¶.
i have always been consistently and fervently pro-fauna. i'm not sure where this way of thinking and acting originated, but i've always tried to do my best not to harm other beings by my own existence. maybe it was learning about Native American and indigenous peoples and their practices of hunting, a way of life lost on us now, a way of honoring and respecting animals while still occasionally eating them (which is how i still justify eating meat on occasion - my understanding of being a "good" human is eating what i need, not being wasteful, and not consuming in excess. i definitely don't hunt for sport, and when i fish, i practice catch-and-release. i also limit or avoid pork, beef, and even chicken (those being the more "feeling" or sentient animals), sticking mostly to fish that i know are fresh water varieties that i could have fished myself, or that were farmed. of course, farm fisheries may have a host of their own ethical problems, but they seem far less terrible than the wide-cast nets they use to catch deep sea shrimp and bycatch. this is also how i justify wearing leather shoes and buying leather bags - because Native American tribes used "the whole" animal and didn't let anything go to waste. also, because leather shoes last longer and are probably better for the environment in the long-run than PVC/plastic shoes that come with cancer warnings and carry shorter use-lives). of course, if animals were hunted rather than "cultivated" in factories, the way they are now, i don't think i'd really have to make this justification. basically, i emulate a way of life that is pre-industrial and pre-modern convenience, the way i imagine life might have been like before we determined a way to industrialize everything, before humans became insane cancers on the environment and decided we owned everything. what might that be called, "transcendental-aspirational"? "a-world-without-humans ecological philosophy"? so, when i say i'm "pro-fauna," that's shorthand for me saying that i aspire to live in a way that respects animals and nature in a non-human-centered way.
so, i'm seriously stressed out right now because my workplace has discovered we have a mice problem, in that they are finding their way into drawers of people's desks and eating food. i was visited by some mice myself, i opened up my drawer and noticed some droppings and when i started cleaning out my drawer, discovered that a pack of flaxseed crackers in a thin plastic wrapper were broken into. clever buggers! i tossed the crackers and put everything else in plastic boxes, and haven't had a problem since. others in the office were so freaked out though, that they set up traps. a few hours later, people in the office were squealing and screaming at the sight of mice. here's what really bothers me about this:
1) these traps are possibly the worst thing ever. they're the sticky film traps, the kind you might use to trap flies, only this time, it's little furry mice, with tails, and whiskers. they get stuck on the film in the most helpless positions, their whiskers glued down, their bodies bent in unnatural positions, their tails whipping around, their paws stuck under their bellies. they squirm and blink for help. and everytime i go to check on them, my stomach fills with guilt and dread, because i feel like it's partially my fault, i irresponsibly stored my snacks andthey invited themselves to a small meal, and now they're suffering in the most terrible ways.
2) mice are very easily and humanely preventable. if you store food more securely (glass jars, plastic storage boxes with high sides and slippery surfaces) and dispose of food properly, you won't have a mice problem. also, peppermint oil is a nice-smelling, easily available, cheap, and harmless alternative to traps. there are also catch-and-release style traps that allow mice to be transported to more mice-friendly places (there is a large field right behind our office building - if they were released there and people got rid of their poorly stored snacks, we wouldn't have a problem).
3) "every animal serves a purpose." my co-worker and cubicle neighbor said that when we were talking and i thought that was really wise and something very few people realize or think about. mice eat the crumbs and tiny scraps that drop behind the desk in those little crevices that are too small to be cleaned, or easily forgotten. they don't actively go after your food unless you aren't smart enough to seal or protect it better. mice would never hurt you or bite you, because they are far more scared of you than you are of them. this idea that "every animal serves a purpose" is important because it gets at the reason why i adopt a "pro-fauna" approach, and also why this sometimes results in an "anti-human" way of thinking: so few humans realize the importance of coexisting with animals. furthermore, this is in direct correlation a direct cause of most humans' belief that they own everything. "it's our office building/kitchen/pantry/food so we have a right to kill creatures that intrude into our space!" actually, the field/forest/farmland that was destroyed so you could build your office building/condo/neighbhorhood was here first, so the animals you displaced kinda have a right to mess up your comfortable little existence if they can, so suck it.
all this to say i am really stressed out from debating what to do about the mice traps in the office (should i free the mice? what if i mangle them when trying to get them free from the sticky paper? should i sabotage the traps or try to throw them away before mice get caught in them and thereby cause my company to endlessly pour resources into traps? should i try to kill the mice humanely, before HR or whoever comes by to collect the traps and just "throw them away" to die slow deaths? should i start setting human traps in retaliation? - debilitating laxative in the coffee pot was my first inclination, but i'm open to suggestions). i still want to live my life in a "pro-fauna" way, but it means, in this case, talking to a lot of stubbornly cruel and human-centric people.
